


filter-paper boy

by lem0nshark



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: F/M, i love him i pwomise, i made it extra angsty for you kat love you, this is angsty as fuck whoops
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-17
Updated: 2019-03-17
Packaged: 2019-11-19 16:10:44
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,118
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18137972
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lem0nshark/pseuds/lem0nshark
Summary: --Diego was a filter-paper boy, flimsy and thin. See-through. He was stuttered words and scabbed hands. He felt too much and showed too little. He was bruised knuckles and battered ribs and split lips.No use crying over spilled blood.Diego was a filter-paper boy, curling up and flying away when the fire got too close.--





	filter-paper boy

**Author's Note:**

> ouchies sorry y'all this is so fucking angsty lol

The first time Diego got seriously hurt on a mission was when some thug, not even the man they were fighting, just one of his henchmen, shot a gun right at his head. He moved away in just enough time for the bullet to miss his skull, but it still left a mark. One long cut across the side of his scalp. It didn’t feel that deep.

Diego kept fighting.

He collapsed a minute later. 

By the time they finished the mission and got Diego to Grace, blood had soaked down Diego’s face and into his the entire right side of his uniform. The cut from the bullet was deep enough that his skull was barely visible through the gore. A centimeter closer and it would have shattered. They found another bullet three inches from his heart.

He was under the knife for hours while Grace stitched him up, and didn’t wake up for the next two days bar eating and the hours when the pain meds wore off.

That first-night Luther broke two punching bags and cracked the drywall in his room. Allison shut and locked herself in, sitting in silence on her bed, although every once in a while a quiet sob and a whisper of “I heard a rumor you’ll be okay” slipped out from under her door. 

Vanya couldn’t be found anywhere except behind the closed door of her room, haunting violin music echoing through the halls of the academy after everyone was asleep. Klaus left that first night and didn’t come back for three days, the smell of weed on his clothes, alcohol on his breath, and a few new pills in his pockets. He wasn’t looking for any new ghosts. 

Five and Ben were already gone. 

\-- 

Diego found out he could breathe indefinitely underwater when he was ten. A week later Reginald found out, and Diego spent hours forced beneath the surface, wrists burning from the ropes his father used to tie him down. His lungs felt fine, and even though Diego was only ten, he found himself wishing they didn’t.

He regressed for months afterward, barely able to speak a word without stuttering.

Diego avoided swimming after that, but he still called himself The Kraken.

\--

When Diego turned fifteen he found Klaus face-down on the bathroom floor in a puddle of his own vomit. That was the first time any of the family had seen Klaus overdose. It wouldn’t be the last.

After Grace pumped Klaus’ stomach, confining him to his bed for the next week, after nights and nights of Diego stumbling into the kitchen because every time he closed his eyes he saw _Klaus, just laying there but this time he was too late, of course, he was, he had to be better_. After days where the house seemed too quiet because his brother was too out of it to even speak, Diego made himself a promise.

He’d never be too late again.

And, beyond that, he made another one, a quieter, darker one that became less of a promise and more of a law-  
He’d never care about anyone enough for them to hurt him when they leave.

Because what did he have to make them stay?

\--

_Throw the knife._

_Curve it._

_Visualize the path in your head._

_Don’t miss._

\--

Diego was a filter-paper boy, flimsy and thin. See-through. He was stuttered words and scabbed hands. He felt too much and showed too little. He was bruised knuckles and battered ribs and split lips.

_No use crying over spilled blood._

Diego was a filter-paper boy, curling up and flying away when the fire got too close.

\--

Eudora was radiant. She was radiant when she hissed sharp words at him during class at the police academy, and she was radiant when she pushed him up against his room’s wall and kissed him, fingers trailing across his leather jacket and pushing up his shirt.

She was beautiful when she shot the training dummy in the perfect spot every time, and she was beautiful when she slapped him over the head for not following protocol.

Eudora was everything.

But Diego couldn’t love her.

He promised.

\--

“My brother Diego was everything you’d expect from a man whose chosen weapon was knives, but his fists came in a close second. He was abrasive and aggressive, but he never asked for help. He pushed all of us away because of his pride. Sometimes I think the only person in our house he loved was our mother.”

Diego wanted to hate Vanya for the book. He was angry, furious, without a doubt, but he couldn’t hate her. Despite everything, she was still his sister. That didn’t stop him from attaching the back cover to his punching bag as an outlet.

\--

Eudora was dead, and part of Diego died with her. He had nothing else left. He was hollowed out, scraped clean. A carcass smoked out like the inside of a tree in a wildfire. 

So he filled that empty space with anger, and buried the casket of his burned and scraped heart in mortar and steel, building it up until he had nothing left to give.

He forgot to build a door to his crypt.

Diego’s heart died on a motel room floor, bleeding out from a single shot to the chest, with a bullet that factories stopped manufacturing decades ago lodged in between its vital organs.

Diego was too late.

He broke his promise.

Diego loved her.

He’d known as soon as he saw her he’d break that promise, and until he held her cold, lifeless body in his arms, he hadn’t cared.

\--

Diego was a filter-paper boy, who’d been coated in concrete and set in steel. He was shouted words and punches thrown. Broken bones and countless scars. His body was refined, shattered and shattered again and again until he was what he’d been born for. A weapon.

But what they don’t tell you about filter-paper boys, about the death of a heart and the dark grey walls of concrete is that filter paper can still tear when it’s protected.

Concrete and steel mean nothing if the paper was already burning before it was cast.

\--

In an empty box, there is a shadow. A shaking hand reaches in, feeling the sides, looking, _hoping_ , for something.

Trembling fingers finally grasp a key.

\--

In the mausoleum of a shattered heart, a hole appears, stretching deep deep deep until it finally reaches the end of the miles of brick and metal. The shaking hand places within this hole a single key. With a click, and resounding, echoing thump, the tomb opens. And the only part of the heart that survived flies out on damaged wings.

Hope.

**Author's Note:**

> yeah,, whoops. i'm actually really proud of this though idk. i do love diego but i also love making him hurt


End file.
